---USA Today has posted this fun story about college football's helmet sticker tradition (author Jeff Rabjohns, Indianapolis Star). The late Woody Hayes is credited for its genesis, but former Georgia coach Vince Dooley took inspiration from military tradition.

Dooley got the idea after he and former Michigan coach Bo Schembechler conducted a series of football clinics at military bases in Europe. Dooley noticed the military medals awarded for outstanding service and thought there could be a correlation to football.

"The general idea was for it to be an incentive program where you reward individuals and teams based on performance and certain things like blocking a kick or making an interception," Dooley said by phone from his office overlooking the Georgia practice facility.

On Connecticut-Rutgers, ESPN will have microphones and a camera operator in the replay officials' booth — what's billed as a college football TV first. "Conferences are interested in increased public confidence in the system," says ESPN coordinating producer Ed Placey. "The public thinks there must be some confusion, some incompetence up there."

But if ESPN, which supplies replays to officials, is also showing those officials to viewers, how will the officials be able to see the replays? They have a tape system to play back ESPN's on-air replays, says Placey, "that's exactly like TiVo."

---Notre Dame's offense hasn't been as explosive this year, but they may have found a third receiver. One of the more interesting critiques of the Irish offense the last two years is that they could never develop a third receiver. It appears David Grimes may finally be that third option. That bodes well for the Irish attack.

---Steve Spurrier's gone with a mobile quarterback this year in Syvelle Newton. I think it's worked out fairly well. For a lot of schools that aren't traditional powers, mobile quarterbacks are increasibly a feasible way to boost their offense. For others the obvious choice is to gimmick their offense and develop a high octane pass attack (such as at Baylor and Texas Tech). That's what is so great about college football is the variety of approaches to playing the game, it's not so stuffy and generic like the NFL.

---Rivals.com's Olin Buchanan has an interesting piece about this year's frosh (and redshirt frosh) quarterbacks. There's a nifty chart near the bottom to compare some of this year's notable frosh QB's. Did you know about SMU's Justin Willis, for example? He has passed for 1,273 yards and 19 touchdowns against just three interceptions with a 70 per cent completion rate. Georgia's Matt Stafford hasn't been as successful.

---And finally, a media tidbit from the Football Writers Association of America's newsletter, The Fifth Down.

From George Schroeder of the Daily Oklahoman: "Just wanted to note a unique occurrence in today's college football. Covered USC-Arkansas (On Sept. 2). Both post-game locker rooms were open. I wonder if that might have been the only game this year between big name programs to feature two open locker rooms?"

Editor's note: USC-UCLA should also be one of those post-game situations where both teams will have open locker rooms. Can anyone think of another?